


Toy Soldiers

by arienai



Category: F.E.A.R. (Video game)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-15
Updated: 2012-06-15
Packaged: 2017-11-07 19:32:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/434592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arienai/pseuds/arienai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Becket at the end of it all. (Spoilers for Project Origin. Written before F.3.A.R.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Toy Soldiers

_But little men grow up, alas_  
To march in wars of their own,  
And the pain they feel and the deaths they die  
Toy soldiers have never known 

Becket knelt exhaustedly in the dust at the edge of a painted landscape, barren red sand stretched on to twilight-hued oblivion behind him. 

He was where he had first collapsed, and though he had managed to claw himself almost upright had gone no further. Certainly not to crawl aimlessly across her playground with what little strength he had left. 

Creak.

At the centre of the picture she dangled from a swing held aloft by the image's sole feature: a gray gnarled leafless tree, cracked and twisted limbs clutching a starless sky. She swung slowly, intently, and with purpose.

Creak. _I am over here now._

Over there was no different than over here, but she was _over there_ in the sense that she deigned to give him peace with artificial distance.

She had left toy soldiers for him, scattered in disarray across the sand. Becket wasn't sure if they were his or hers - drab grey-green plastic full of bubbles and dents and lines from cheap molding, the kind any boy from the past fifty years might have owned - but it was safe to assume that everything here was hers, whether it came from his making or not. Some were grouped haphazardly in squads, others lonesomely distant, and some pitiful few face-down and half-buried by the dust.

Idly, he touched one. It was warped, blackened, like the soldiers Becket had held under a magnifying glass as a child.

Creak.

_Every breath was agony because the inside of his lungs were as scorched as the outside of his skin, body armor melted, fused like candle wax to paper and when they'd tried to pull it off it had bled and he'd screamed, screamed so loud they clutched their heads and mercifully left him here to die._

_**Too close. To the blast.** _

_If it hurt so much to breathe why keep doing it? It hurt less not to._

_**I know. We're coming for you.** _

_Bright pink blood dribbled over his lips when he coughed._

_**No point. Too dangerous. Won't be long, now.** _

_Then bright red blood. He was drowning in it._

_**No, it's clear. She took care of them. The blast site's gone cold. We're com-- who is that?** _

_Black. He blinked to clear it. No good - his sight was gone._

_**Who... who. Yes. There's someone here.** _

_Someone powerful like the general or his brother. Who are you?_

_**WHO ARE YOU?** _

_Who are you?_

A thousand pairs of eyes snapped towards Becket, and he recoiled as if struck, wrenching himself free. Free from the raw pain of one dying soldier and into the dim silent nothing of another.

Strands of stringy, unkempt black hair brushed his shoulder, leaving a trail of grease.

He flinched. His heart hammered. She was _over here_ now, standing behind him. She was a child, now, in her bloody red dress. "Boys like toy soldiers," she said.

Becket shook his head. For now he kept the trembling to his hands.

"No? Then let's play something else."

A low, child's table badly propped on the uneven ground, laid with dusty teacups on a ragged cloth. Becket was seated beside her at one end, across from three dolls. She - Alma, her name is Alma - pretended to pour tea for them, humming.

One doll pretended to drink. This doll had no face, a face that was a black void where a face should be and shifted shape formlessly before his eyes, save for the matted black hair she patterned after her mother. Becket understood that his daughter was here the same way they both were here - from that nothing face she stared at him with hatred.

The second doll was motionless, laid limply face-down in his plate. The plaster of his head was cracked open and from it grey spongy human brain leaked out and stained the tablecloth. 

The third sat fixed, his facemask and nightvision goggles firmly in place, apart from the rest. Punished. He could have been anyone.

"Don't you like your tea, daddy?" The void that was his daughter asked coyly. "Mommy worked so hard to make it." 

Becket felt Alma's gaze on his neck like a brand, and he pressed the cup to his lips hurriedly. He tore his eyes from her and the nothing doll and the corpse doll to stare through the red plastic lenses of the soldier doll. Delta? He wore nothing to name him or mark his rank, but he wore the familiar black of urban spec ops.

"The boys are boring." His daughter demurred, clutching her mother's hand. "Come sit with me."

The soldier doll met his gaze. And blinked.

Recklessly Becket reached out to him, leaned forward. **Who are you?**

Alma _shrieked_. The dolls shattered. The table - no, the painting - vanished and she grabbed him by the hair and flooded him with excruciating rage. He saw the man who was the soldier doll stand above the kneeling form of the man who was the corpse doll, and press the muzzle of his pistol to his forehead.

Bang. Bits of brain and porcelain skull. 

Alma was still screaming. So Becket fled, fled with everything he had while the grief of her sons murdering each other still wracked her.

_This was no better. Why did he still value these hard-won moments of lucidity? The freedom of being strapped to a chair awaiting his own cruel execution, locked inside a machine, his unsteady, ragged breaths hopelessly fogging the sole plastic window and the pitch blackness beyond it._

_Becket's eyelids now scraped against his eyes when he blinked them - only one would still open, swollen and gummed shut with dried crusts of the puss that leaked from their corners. Before, he could cry to clear them a little._

_Likewise his tongue scraped his mouth, filled it with the taste of vomit and garbage. His breath, bone dry, rattled in his throat._

_The worst, though, was the smell. The stench. It was so acrid it stung his nose. He had been here for days, his BDU now stained with sweat and blood and saliva and the piss he sat in. His pants were soaked with it; it stung the open sores that multiplied every hour he was trapped here, unmoving._

_He'd yelled at first, during these moments of clarity. The rest of his squad, backup perhaps, might come for him. A day passed, then two, and when his lips had shriveled to nothing, cracked and bleeding, he'd started to scream. Maybe one of the Replica soldiers would hear him. Maybe a ghost. Maybe they would risk Alma's wrath to put him out of his misery, if he screamed enough._

_By now he'd resigned himself to death. With her, of course, he didn't have to face the pain of dying. But here, at least, his thoughts were his own._

He thought about Keira. Sorry, Lieutenant Stokes. When they were on duty it was "sir" or "ma'am" if it was an order, Stokes when they were joking around. It was that or be treated to a lecture about how hard it was for a woman to be assigned to the all-male Delta Force, even as a contractor, and if he screwed that up for her she'd have his balls. Until they hit the showers, she was Stokes and he was Becket. 

When she traded her tac gear for a pair of khakis, a tank top, and white running shoes, then she was Keira. And in his acid wash jeans, crew neck, and popped collar, he was Michael. 

_Damn_ she was cute. How did a cute girl like her wind up in the military, let alone in spec ops? She was no medic, either.

I don't know, Michael, how did a cute boy like you wind up in the military, let alone in spec ops?

If the other guys couldn't see it, well that was more for him. Stokes was cool under pressure and a great shot and could hack cell tower, he'd seen her do it. He couldn't set his own damn VCR. Back when he had one. Keira was a lightweight who snorted when she giggled, liked really girly drinks like chocolate mocha vodka coolers, all soft blue eyes and soft breasts and sweat-slicked skin.

All guys in the service woke up in the night, sometimes. Heart pounding, the gunshot from their dreams still ringing in the air. At least he was pretty sure they did - and pretty sure that not all of them had Keira roll over next to them, kiss them tenderly with lips that still tasted like vodka and chocolate.

Then stroke him beneath the sheets, warm little hands with calloused fingertips - she wore fingerless gloves, in combat. She slept naked; she was already wet when he stroked her, nails trimmed just for her, felt her squeeze and tighten around his hand.

She pushed him up against the headboard, eased herself into his lap while he held her waist. She flashed a wicked little grin and --

_A malevolent grin._

"Michael..." She gasped, breath caught, next to his ear.

_**"Michael..."** _

"No... No!"

_"No... no... no...." Becket pleaded to the emptiness outside the capsule. Tugged weakly at the restraints. "No..."_

He fought, he struggled, he vanished from her painting world and his own world and back again, but she was just so much stronger - she held him trapped his own bed using Keira's now-emaciated body, _one eye open to watch his breath fog the plastic window, from which he'd watched Keira's twitching death spasms_.

She didn't understand, he thought, how much stronger she was. Or maybe she did. And didn't care, like no one had ever cared about her. How painful it was to have her presence in his mind like this, invading his every thought, twisting his memories until it was her riding him viciously, unkempt greasy hair brushing his chest, knobby bone-thin thighs locked around his waist, watching him with hateful mirth as he struggled, helpless not to take some pleasure out of it.

But long, long after that had worn away _to stain his damp BDU_ Alma was there, and there was nothing for him but exhaustion and torture. "Stop..." he begged. Hammers in his skull, sickness in the pit of his stomach. Alma naked, moaning with pleasure.

His daughter was watching them.

"Stop... stop stop _stop stop..." Precious fluid leaked from the corners of his mouth and the corners of his eyes, as he writhed._

Until Becket had nothing left in him to resist, and laid there quietly until she was done. His vision rolled from black to grey to dusty red; his daughter circled him like a vulture.

Creak. _I am over here_.

She was gone, but not really, and he lay in the dust next to the toy soldiers.

Plastic bit into his palm where he clutched the burnt one still.

This time when he crawled away with shuddering, sob-wracked breaths, she did not move to stop him.

Creak.

_Crawled away to his living breathing body, with its living, breathing pain. Blood trickled from his nose. And his forearms, where he'd scraped the skin off of his wrists._

_Becket grit his teeth. What little power he had left, it would have to be enough._

_He called out to the soldier doll._

_**"Help me. Whoever you are, help me."** _

_The emptiness was still watching. "Mommy, daddy's doing something bad."_

_His voice cracked with dryness and desperation. His vision was fading. **"HELP ME!"**_

 

* * *

 

A soldier helped an injured medic limp out of the limits of the ruined, scorched city, as steady on the rubble as she was unsure. She clung to him. Between the two of them only his night vision still functioned, and she was blind.

He set her down carefully for a moment to rest. The highway was only a few hundred yards away; they were safe. Still, he cocked his head toward the horizon, pistol in hand.

"You okay?" She asked.

He nodded. "Can you make it from here, Jin?"

"I... well, sure, but..." She stumbled over the words as he turned, impossibly, back. "Where the hell are you going?"

"We left someone back there." He unslung his rifle, loaded and cocked it.

" _Who?_ "

"My step-father." With that, the soldier was gone.

 

* * *

 

And the toy soldier dropped soundlessly into the dust.


End file.
